“Nice to meet you, sir.”
Zane laughed. “If I didn’t feel old before, I do now.”
As Zane and Brady began discussing the changes at the middle school, Maggie went to the sink and washed her hands, leaning close to Kim to whisper, “Not only has he agreed to help with the house, you’ve managed to get him to stay for dinner. Fast work. I’m impressed.” A sparkle danced in her eyes.
“Shh. He’ll hear. And the only work I’m doing is getting this place finally taken care of.”
When Kim grabbed her oven mitts and took the bread out, Anna and Polly came back into the room, tugging on Kim’s dad’s hand. “I told you two I wasn’t hungry. I haven’t changed my mind since you dragged me in here.”
“Papa Keith, it’s safe. Mom fixed spaghetti. She knows how to make that.”
Heat scorched Kim’s cheeks.
Her father’s attention shifted from one person’s face to another until it finally rested on Kim’s. His gaze penetrated through her. “We have a lot to talk about later.”
“Fine, we will. After we eat.” Kim refused to back down from her dad. She would make him see there was no other option, and he was going to have to live with the arrangement. “Zane, since you’re our guest, you can serve yourself first.”
Zane started toward Kim, stopped and faced her father. “There’s nothing we can do about what happened in the past. I have put it behind me.”
Kim sensed a challenge being issued to her father, and he wasn’t liking it one bit. He frowned and shuffled toward the table to get his plate, then hung back from the others.
Anna tugged on Kim’s arm, and she bent down. “What happened in the past?” Anna whispered loud enough that everyone in the room heard.
“Honey, nothing important now.” Kim pasted a smile on her face, the strain of it quivering the corners of her mouth.
“Ah, you never tell me anything.”
She tweaked Anna’s nose. “It isn’t any of your business.”
Five minutes later, everyone was served except her father who waited to be last. He approached the stove with his plate. His hand quaked. Kim watched, ready to step in and help. He was trembling more than usual, which only meant he was stressed and upset. She shouldn’t have asked Zane to dinner, on top of everything else. But if he was going to be repairing their home, her father needed to be civil and get used to Zane being here.
The alternative was having a rain-soaked upstairs that leaked down into the ground floor, which had finally dried out. She had only recently gotten rid of the moldy, musty smell that permeated the whole place since the storm.
When her father took his chair at the head of the table, everyone began eating. Zane bowed his head and closed his eyes for a moment, then picked up his fork and speared some spaghetti.
Was Zane a Christian? One of the fights they’d had when they’d been dating was over her faith. She’d wanted to get married in the church. Zane hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with a religious ceremony. Maggie had mentioned to her once that Zane was going to Hope Community Church now, which had only reinforced Kim’s reason for staying away. For the past ten years, she’d seen less evidence of the Lord in people’s lives. Life had become one series of struggles after another. The hurricane only confirmed that.
Anna looked at Zane and broke the silence that had descended at the table. “How do you know my mom?”
Kim’s father snorted. When he brought his fork to his mouth, his hand quavered so badly he had to put it back on his plate without tasting the food. His gaze drilled into Kim, who curled her fingers around her napkin in her lap.
Zane finished eating his bite. “We dated once.”
Anna’s eyes grew round. “You did? What happened?”
“Anna!” Her daughter’s curiosity would be the death of Kim—from embarrassment.
“But, Mom, you never tell me anything about when you were growing up. Papa Keith has, but you haven’t.”
“He has?” Kim glanced at her dad, who hunched over his plate, his head down.
Anna gulped down some milk. “Yeah, going through some of those boxes in the attic got me to wondering about what you did when you were a kid.”
“I’ve told you. I grew up in this home. Except for a few years when I was married to your father, I’ve lived here my whole life. It’s been in our family for over a hundred and fifty years. That’s why it’s so important to get it repaired properly.”
“Do you fix a lot of houses?” Anna asked Zane.
“Yes. I’m going to start on your roof tomorrow.”
“I can help you.” Brady tore off a piece of bread and chewed it.
“Me, too.” Anna beamed. “I’ve never been on the roof.”
A vision of her daughter standing three stories above the ground paraded across Kim’s mind. “And you aren’t going to start now.”
“Ah, Mom, why not? We can all pitch in and help fix this house up.”
“That’s what Mom and Dad are doing. They let me help when I’m not in school,” Polly added while scooping up her last bite of spaghetti.
Everyone looked at Kim, including her dad and Zane. She fought the urge to squirm. Her daughter was right. If they all helped as much as possible, Zane would be gone faster, and their home could be restored to the way it was.
Kim focused on her daughter, ignoring all the other stares. “I can’t have you up on the roof.”
Anna pouted. “That doesn’t mean I can’t do something.”
“I’m sure I could find something for Anna to do if that’s all right with you, Kim.”
Oh, sure. Just come in and take over. When she had gone in desperation to ask him to help her today, she hadn’t envisioned him being here day in and day out. She’d thought maybe he would supervise from a distance—a long distance.
“We have been working on the house and yard. You should have seen it right after the hurricane.” With work, seeing to everyone in the house and her father’s illness, Kim had little time to do all she had needed to do, but she’d tried.
“I did see it right after the hurricane.”
The thought that Zane had come by and looked at her place threw her off-kilter. What else had he done? Did he know about the past fifteen years? About her failed marriage?
Her father scraped back his chair on the wooden floor and struggled to his feet. “I’m done.”
With his hand on the table, he turned toward the door and started for it. At the sight of his unsteady gait, Kim rose at the same time Zane did. Her father reached for the bookcase by the exit but missed and went down. Zane rushed to him a few paces ahead of her.
“Let me help you.” Zane put his arm around her father and raised him up partway.
Dad glared at Zane and yanked away. He would have gone down again if Zane hadn’t secured his hold on her father.
She hurried to his side. “You need help.”
“Not him.” Tears glistened in her dad’s eyes. “Please.”
Kim glanced at Zane. “I can do it from here. Thanks for helping.”
Zane backed off a few feet while Kim fought to get her father to a standing position, then locked her arms about him and assisted him out of the room. When she peered back, Zane stood there, his jaw clamped in an inflexible line. But in his eyes she saw pity. That look fired her anger.
* * *
When she left her father’s bedroom after making sure he was resting, Kim made her way downstairs. Large sheets of plastic cordoned off the damaged part of the house from the livable area. She couldn’t go back into the game room. By the time she did, she wanted Zane gone. She didn’t want the man’s pity about what was going on here. She needed his help but not any emotional investment for him—or her.
Stepping out on the veranda that ran the length of the front of the house, Kim drew in a deep breath of the cool winter air, laced with a salty aroma. Night blanketed the terrain, but in the distance, between the sounds of cars, she could hear the water lapping up on the beach. That sound a
lways calmed her. She sank down on the top stair next to one of the stone lions that guarded her home. Their worn surface had weathered over the years, but they had stayed in place when the water came inside from the Gulf. Seeing them the next morning after the storm passed had given her hope that all the damage she’d seen inside could be fixed.
But three months later she wasn’t so sure. They had scrubbed all the rooms downstairs, stripped away the rot and aired the place for weeks. Only recently had their neighbor’s moisture meter indicated everything was dry. Now it was time to restore the interior. That required money they didn’t have.
“We need to talk.”
Zane’s voice pierced her tranquility, robbing her of the peace the sound of the ocean had brought her. “I know but can we tomorrow? Today has been long and tiring.”
“I want to get a few things settled tonight. If we can’t work it out, I don’t see how I can make the repairs.” He folded his long length on the step beside her and rested his elbows on his jean-clad thighs, loosely clasping his hands.
From the light streaming through the open front door, she glimpsed his face. “You’re backing out already?” Like you backed out of our relationship?
“No, but after this evening it’s clear your father doesn’t want me here. I didn’t expect to be warmly welcomed into your home, but I can’t work if he causes problems or gets too upset every time he sees me. It’s evident he’s having physical problems, and I won’t be responsible for something happening to him if he gets stressed. It isn’t a big secret your dad and I don’t get along.”
“I’m sorry for his behavior tonight. He hasn’t taken this well at all. I’ve tried to get some counseling for him, but he’ll have none of it. Right after the hurricane, I found him in the living room. He stood in a few inches of water, stunned and weeping. I’ve never seen him do that.”
“Years ago, I forgave him, but he hasn’t forgiven me for being poor or the son of a drunkard.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, wait. He probably wouldn’t have cared about that if I hadn’t dared to date his daughter.”
She would have married Zane in spite of what her father had felt, but Zane had never given her a chance. He’d left Hope and her. One night he was supposed to come pick her up for her senior prom, but he didn’t show up. It wasn’t until the next day she’d discovered Zane was gone. Then later she saw the check that her father had written to Zane.
“Was I only worth twenty thousand dollars to you?”
Chapter Three
Zane rose, her accusation blasting him in the face. “What do you mean? Twenty thousand dollars?”
“Not long after you left, when I went to get a check for Mom to pay the housekeeper, I saw the stub of the check my dad wrote you for twenty thousand dollars.” Kim wouldn’t let him have a height advantage on her. She stood and took the top stair, so they were eye to eye. “It was written the day before you disappeared.”
“I didn’t disappear. My father knew where I was going.”
“I asked him. He didn’t tell me.”
“Because I made him promise not to.”
“Why?” The anger that had festered for years came to the surface, welling up from deep inside her.
“We weren’t meant to be together. We were from two different worlds. I thought at one time we could ignore our differences and love would conquer all. I was wrong. I didn’t even have any money to take you to prom in the style you were accustomed to. The tux I had managed to borrow for the dance didn’t fit me. I stood in front of the mirror and saw someone I didn’t like. Someone who was trying to be what he wasn’t.”
“Did my father ever offer you money?”
“Yes, but I’m not that type of person. He made it clear he would use all his power to break us up.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because family meant so much to you. I didn’t want to come between y’all. I thought with time he would see that with hard work I could make something of myself. But the reason I didn’t show up for prom was because I was sitting in jail. The police officer said I ran a stop sign. My one phone call was to you. Your father answered, and he told me my problems had just begun, that he was going to make my life miserable, especially if I did anything wrong, even something as simple as running a stop sign. When I got out of jail the next morning, I left town. I had had hours to think about us. Your father was right. We were too different. You had dreams of going to college. I just wanted to earn a living.”
Her father had connections in Hope, but would the former police chief do that? Either way, her father had been right that she and Zane weren’t meant to be together. “So without talking to me, you gave up on us?” Knowing he hadn’t accepted the money should have made her happy, but it didn’t. What was wrong with her that men she was with wanted to leave her? First it was Zane, then later it was her husband.
“It wouldn’t have changed my mind. When I left Hope, I hadn’t intended to ever come back. We were young. We didn’t know what we wanted.”
I wanted you. She held those words inside. She would never tell him that. The past years had taken care of those feelings she’d had at eighteen. Instead she said, “The bottom line is I need your help with this house. At the very least I need a roof put on as quickly as possible. I want this to work. As far as I’m concerned, just as you said upstairs, what happened years ago is in the past. I’m not concerned about that. It’s the future that has me worried.”
“But will your father accept me here?”
“He will. He has to. He wants this house put back together. That’s part of the reason he’s so stressed. We’re living in half the upstairs. We had to move our kitchen upstairs and make do with what we could rig up. Not the most ideal situation.”
“Then I’ll be here at two tomorrow. Can you give me the information about what shingles you want?”
“Yes. I’ve got it inside.”
“I can make some calls and put a rush on the delivery. In the meantime, I’ll prep the roof, so as soon as the shingles are delivered, I can start on it. I should be able to pull another man from one of my other projects for a few days.”
“My offer still stands. I will assist any way I can.”
“For this part, there isn’t much you can do except clean up the yard. That will save me some time.”
“We can do that.”
He moved up to the top step, his face coming more into the light streaming from the house. For a second, his medium-length black hair caught her attention. It still curled on his nape. She used to run her fingers through it and play with those curls. She wrenched her gaze away only to be snagged by his penetrating blue eyes. She used to think that was his best feature, but then he gave her his dazzling grin that took over his whole face and she’d decided it was his smile that appealed to her the most. But she hadn’t seen that in years—the one where his two dimples appeared and his eyes shone with a rich brilliance. She missed it.
“I’m sorry to hear about your father’s illness. He was never my favorite person, but I didn’t want to see him sick.”
His husky Southern drawl flowed over her, drawing her back into the past and threatening to melt her heart. She backed away a few feet and inhaled a deep breath, then another. “When Mom died, it wasn’t long before he began to have problems. He went to the doctor, and they diagnosed him with Parkinson’s disease, stage one. Now he’s in stage two.”
“Until I returned to Hope, I didn’t realize your mother had died. What happened?”
“Stroke. She went quickly, but it was such a shock to Dad and me. She hadn’t had any problems before that—at least ones we knew about. She had a way of not wanting to worry Dad with anything.”
“She was a classy lady.”
“Yeah. I still miss her.”
“I know you two were close. I’m so sorry she’s gone.”
How was she going to keep her distance? The conversation was becoming personal. Zane knew so much about her from the year they had dated. But th
en she wasn’t that person anymore, and from what she was glimpsing with him, he wasn’t the same, either.
“Yes, we were close. She was not only my mother but my best friend.” Her mom was the one who had helped her get through Zane leaving her. Her throat closing and tears threatening, Kim swung around and started for the door. She’d spent too much time revisiting the past today. She swallowed several times and said, “Let me find the information you need. Will you need any money up front?”
“No, we’ll settle at the end.”
“But what about the shingles?”
“Kim, you can pay everything—even the supplies—at the end. And I’ll only charge you my costs. I’m trying not to make money on the tragedy that happened to Hope. That is the least I can do. The Lord has been good to me. I can afford it.”
“Some people don’t feel that way. Like the contractor we hired.” She gave him a smile. “I’ll be right back.”
She went inside and up to her room and searched the top of her messy desk. When she found the shingle brochure, she made her way to the veranda, feeling for the first time in a long while a sense of hope. Her gaze skimmed over the heavy plastic sheeting hanging down and forming a corridor from the staircase to the front door. What happened to her home had stressed her more than she’d realized. Until the contractor had left town, she’d been able to suppress her concerns and feelings about the dishevelment her life had become. But not anymore.
Out on the veranda, she handed Zane the pamphlet with her notes on it. “We’re still trying to settle with the insurance company, but the roof was covered fortunately. Once it’s completely done, they will pay us the rest of the money.” She hoped it would pay for the supplies.
“I’ll get on this right away. I’d better go. I need to go by the school and see how that project is wrapping up.”
“So much of the original building was damaged beyond repair. I went to class there when I was in elementary school. I’ve been watching the changes you’ve had to make.”
Love Runs Deep (New Beginnings Book 7) Page 3